


The one with the neighbouring cottages

by akachankami



Series: Shippers Anonymous [11]
Category: Downton Abbey
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-03
Updated: 2017-08-03
Packaged: 2018-12-10 20:26:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 391
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11699295
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akachankami/pseuds/akachankami
Summary: Prompt:Charles and Elsie have both retired into neighbouring cottages. One night Charles is closing his bedroom curtains when he notices from there he can see directly into Elsie's bathroom; where she is currently taking off her robe ready for her bath.





	The one with the neighbouring cottages

And that's why he closes the blinds, curses himself and goes to bed.

But he cannot sleep. He cannot unsee what's been seen and he saw! The white skin of her arms and the way her hair fell on her shoulders, the gentle curve of her spine… What is he supposed to do now? That woman is clearly teasing him! She should have closed her blinds! What if someone saw her? … He did!

Better him than some stranger… he thinks. Or _is_ it, better?

Because he cannot help tossing and turning in his bed all night and he has a terrible dream in which Elsie was having a bath in his room and the floor was covered in bubbles and she was singing an old song he used to know from the stages and when she turned around she smiled at him and climbed on the bed with him to rest her still dripping glorious nudity next to him…

It was a very wet dream and he woke up sweating profusely with one hand down his pants.

Cursing himself for the hundredth time he takes a bath himself, dries and changes and making penance for being such a ridiculous old filthy man he knocks at her door at seven in the morning.

"Mr Carson," she greets him still sleepy "why the long face?"

"I have a confession, Mrs hughes," he says when they are sitting at her table with a cup of coffee "your bathroom window, it faces my bedroom window," he continues as she nods "and I… the blinds were open and I… you should close your blinds when you decide to have a bath," he suggests with finality burying his nose in his cup to avoid her questioning look.

Elsie frowns: "Mr Carson, were you snooping?"

"No!" he answers promptly "I would never!"

She just smiles sounding relieved: "So you did not see the scar on my back."

"You have no scar on your back, your back is beautiful!" he says before he can catch himself and she laughs.

Caught.

But she's oddly not mad at him…

That night, before taking her usual bath, she sits by her bedroom window behind the curtain and waits for Charles to take a bath with open blinds, as always, right in front of her. She always knew he had a shapely bottom.


End file.
